That was Jim’s family. And they killed themselves with sleeping pills rather than risk getting infected with Rage.
Algernon, your question lends itself to my original beef, which pertains to the slipshod fictional constructs that comprise the only real flaw to this movie.
What, exactly, is this “slipshod fictional construct” you’re refering to? The fact that there are dead bodies out there that aren’t infected? Unlike Romero’s Dead movies, if you die, you don’t come back to life as an infected. Mayube you missed Justin_Bailey’s post, but if you paid attention to the film, you can tell that Jim’s family inhaled a bunch of sleeping pills and drank a bottle of wine. The world around them was falling apart, there was no way to escape, and they’d given up. Instead of taking the chance of becoming one of the infected, they ended their lives. How is this a “slipshod fictional construct”?
As for the other bodies, those were found at the dinner Jim found the little boy in. Who knows how they died. Perhaps the boy got infected, the father wanted to kill him but the mother stopped him because he was “her little boy,” and in the struggle they killed themselves (or he killed her, the kid got away, and he killed himself in grief). WHo knows why, or how they died, but the fact is…they died, and dead people don’t get infected. They just stay corpses. Again, I don’t see anything wrong with the logic or science here.
Thanks Justin. Did they really explain the sleeping pill suicides, or did I just miss it? And is my memory flawed with regard to dead people at the dining room table? Or is that some other movie?
Upon posting I see that El Elvis Rojo confirms (sort of) my memory of people dead around a dinner table. Elvis, you’re implying there were signs of a struggle. True?
I’m completely blanking on people at a dining room table, but Elvis seems to think that was at the diner. I don’t really remember anything special about those bodies other than that they were dead. And thus bodies, I guess.
The sleeping pills were mentioned in the movie, specifically in the suicide note Jim’s family left for him. It said (I’m paraphrasing this from memory so it won’t be exact):
We left you sleeping and the world went to hell.
So we’ve decided to sleep forever, just like you.
Don’t ever wake up Jim!
Don’t ever wake up!
Sheesh. I guess I’d make a terrible crime scene eyewitness. Thanks for the edification.
Elvis, can you clarify the scene we seem to remember?
Didn’t we talk about this already, EER? 
You and I seem to have signifigantly different ideas about what constitutes a truly watertight narrative. See, the fact that there are these dead bodies just lying around (I’m talking about the ones at the diner, not Jim’s family) that so obviously aren’t infected can come across as a little jarring when the central idea of this story is a virus that has turned people into raging maniacs. People who haven’t become infected, but are still dead, are a cipher, do you see? A question mark whose existence can only be explained through speculation, such as the kind you offered in your post- but we shouldn’t have to shrug our shoulders and say, “Who knows? They’re just there.” If the writer had constructed his story in such a way as to make clear what could happen to a person in this movie in any given situation- be they infected, killed, feeling a little blue, what have you- well, then, to put it simply, none of these nagging “But I don’t get why…” threads would exist!
You’re obviously enamored of the film, and that’s great- I am, too (as I’ve said!). But that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the moments that detract from its overall flawlessness.
Okay, I just watched it again, and in the dinner there are at least four dead bodies. One is a little girl lying face down on the floor holding a dolly; one is an old man that Jim walks over; and two are sitting at a table. The place is a mess, but there’s really no hard sign of a struggle. Could be the place got robbed and the mugger shot everyone, but there’s really no proof to that either. What can you say, people just die.
Also, it is quite possible that the little boy does scream “I hate you!” just before Jim smashes him, but there’s a quick shot of him while the words are being said and his mouth is just wide open in that “I’m gonna eat you” look, so again, I think it’s just something in Jim’s mind, but I could be wrong.
And again, I don’t see why you need every little thing explained to you. Did you miss the whole point of the Seargent’s speach that “Life goes on”? Despite the fact their world’s gone to shit, people still need to eat, sleep, and shit. And, people still die by normal means, whether it be heart attacks, or ruptured appendixes, or an axidentally fall over a railing. I don’t see why there’s a need for every little fucking thing to be explained. And who’s to say any of these people weren’t infected? Aside from being grimmy from runnign around and their eyes, there’s not much to distinguish an infected from a non-infected. How different did Frank look to you? Say they did come across the body of a man that died of a heart attack…do we really need to see our heroes finding a bottle of heart medication and announcing to the audience “Must have been a heart attack.” That treats the audience like a bunch of stupid dumbasses, and I personally, feel offended when movies do that (that was my biggest peeve with the American version of The Ring…they spent so much time working on “See, this is where that imagery in the video comes from” that it was just stupid).
Again, part of what makes a movie good is the ability to empathise with the characters, and here…the characters know very little about what’s going on. So why should the audience know more than them? Why should we be force fed every little bit of information? The existance of these “Why?” threads is what signifies a good movie to me, because it keeps you thinking and involved in the film. In looking into all these questions, it’s helped me appreciate the movie and what the director did even more, and helped me notice other little tid bits I missed when I re-watch the film. So in my eyes, they’re a good thing.
And yes, I am enamoured with the movie, because it’s a fantastic film. Technically, it was magnificent, and as a fan of zombie movies, it was a hell of a lot better than pretty much anything I’ve seen over the past several years (at least as far as serious zombie movies go). Again, every movie you see you have to just shrug and let things go by, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to enjoy any movie. I don’t find any of these “unexplained mysteries” jarring or detrimental to the structure of the film.
This just doesn’t make any sense. People who are dead but uninfected aren’t a “cipher.” People were dying before the Rage virus was released, people continue to die after the Rage virus burns itself out. Once society started collapsing in earnest, death from lack food, water, shelter, basic medical care, or any of a thousand other mortal dangers that we’ve all forgotten about thanks to the benefits of civilization is going to be just as pandemic as the hordes of vomitting zombies.
Besides which, a big part of the atmosphere of 28 Days Later is the sense of not knowing what’s going on. El Elvis Rojo touched on this, but a big part of the impact of the movie comes from the feeling that we’re only seeing a tiny part of an enormous story. The dead family at the diner is a mystery because there’s no one left to tell their story. They’ve been wiped out, the memory of who they were and what they did and how they died has been lost forever. And that’s repeated an uncountable number of times across the bredth of the British Isles. If Boyle had tried to explain every single scene like this, it would have ruined the film, because the it depends on the sense of being lost and confused to deliver its emotional impact.
Every movie ever made relies on the audience making some inferred conclusions. If a guy draws a gun and starts shooting, the audience isn’t going to think, “Hey, we never saw him put bullets in that gun! What gives?” In 28 Days Later, we see a dead family that doesn’t appear to have been infected by Rage. Obviously, they were killed by some other side effect of the total breakdown of society. A description of what, exactly, did them in is entirely unnecessary: the point is, even if you can survive the zombies, you’re still probably going to die anyway. And no one will ever know, and no one will ever care.
Oh, and Elvis, I think that the kid in the dinner does, indeed, say “I hate you” to Jim, and it’s not supposed to be just in his head. What I took from that is that the virus doesn’t make you mindless, it just makes you so totally consumed with anger that you want to destroy everything and everyone around you, but it’s still you in there doing all these horrible things. That’s a perfect example of what I was talking about above, how by not explaining everythingin torturous detail enhances the film. Instead of having a scientist character show up to drop an exposition bomb, or interrogating the zombie chained up in the courtyard, or any of that. Instead you get one quick throw-away line of dialogue, and the audience is left thinking, “Wait, did that zombie just talk? But that means…” The ramificatons, rather than being spelled out, are implied, which is far more frightening.
I don’t think that it had any major plot holes, for the reasons I’ve covered in freakish detail in my earlier posts. A good movie doesn’t explain everything that happens: it trusts its audience to have enough intelligence to figure out that which is not explicitly stated. A good movie engages the audience’s imagination, and leaves them thinking about it. Sometimes it’s about the themes or subtext of the film (“Is it morally right to sacrifice five soldier’s lives to save one private?”), sometimes it’s about plot elements that weren’t explained in the movie (“Where do you think those giant burrowing worms came from in the first place?”). This is precisely what made 28 Days Later such an interesting movie: it didn’t explain every little detail, and left it up to the audience to fill in the holes with their own conjecture.
As a side note, I thought the note Jim’s parents left him was one of the most heart-rending things I’ve ever heard in a movie. Imagine how much life must suck if your most fervent wish is for your only child to remain in a persistent vegetative state.
First,let it be clear that I am am absolutely enamored of the film, but. . .
My beef is that it is labeled as a zombie film. What zombies? Where? The infected are living humans who have contracted an incurable illness that fills them with rage. They don’t rise from the dead, they don’t feast on the entrails of their victims. You might as well label The Omega Man a zombie film because the lead character is surrounded by plague victims who want to kill him (Mind you, that movie had its own problems–the head of the Family curses Neville as a “creature of the wheel” whose embrace of science and technology has doomed mankind, and then the Family brings out. . . a catapult!)
**28 Days Later ** is an apocalyptic nightmare, but a zombie film? No, says I.
Omega Man isn’t a zombie movie? Like hell!
But isn’t that what most zombie films are (okay, not most, but the best)? I mean, The Dead Trilogy was pretty much just that…an end of the world story. Nowhere was safe, people kept dying, the dead kept rising, and no matter what you did, the world as anyone knew it, was over. In that sense, I think this movie fits perfectly. Sure, the infected are alive and not walking corpses, but aside from that fact, the movie fits the genre perfectly. If Rage did kill and ressurrect the infected, would that change your mind?
I’ve heard Day of the Comet refered to as a “zombie film”, which was pretty much the same damn thing as The Omega Man in its treatment of people turned into bloodthirsty cannibal killers. I guess this is where the trickiness of cross-genre films comes in. If for you, zombies have to be walking dead, then yes, I guess this doesn’t count as a zombie film. For me, it works perfectly and I took it as a great way of expanding the idea, so the classification works for me.
Just dropping in here to let y’all know that I haven’t forgotten about this thread. I have some replies to some things peope have said, but I have been holding off on posting because 1-The Board has been having some…problems of late, as you are no doubt aware, and 2-The work is damnably tedious without nested quotes. Dammit, SDMB! Give me back my nested quotes!
Just got the DVD and so could watch the film for the second time (gasp, only the second?!). It really is as good as I thought the first time, a truely enjoyable film. None of the stuff nitpicked here jumped out at me, the only thing that bugged me (which practically noone has mentioned here) is the carelessness taken by the uninfected with regards to body-fluids. I can rationalise away the machetes, cos you have to have blood for it to be a splatter flick, but Jim shouldn’t have been dry-shaving (shaving at all) and there should have been a lot more goggle-usage by the soldiers etc, they stood there getting splattered! I can look past that though for a good cause 
The locations are out of action at the moment so I can’t see if the split between loving and being irritated by the film has a us/uk split, but I know that for me personally a huge part of the pleasure in the film is the ability to identify with the characters, they curse properly, they eat malteasers and drink tango, this is what it would be like if I were “left behind” 
and Jim, man Jims a fucking paddy! A paddy action hero, it’s bloody brilliant, go on with your skinny fish-belly-white self!!!
Having seen this movie and hating the numerous plot flaws previously mentioned, I have to ask (please forgive if already mentioned, just skimmed thread):
-
Where the hell are the zillion abandoned cars that would be left in a large city like London?
-
Why don’t they get a better/newer/faster/larger vehicle, so as to risk less vehicle damage when running over zombies?
-
How could they get such a vehicle, you ask? Go to a dealership and just take one, that’s how. Yeah, they probably don’t have many SUVs there, as we do here in the US, but still: a large city like London has to have (several?) American SUV dealerships for the rich and famous.
-
Better still, why not steal a bank’s armored truck? I’ll bet they have built in radios, too (see point 6)
-
For that matter, why not get several vehicles so as to allow a margin of safety (in case one vehicle is disabled)?
-
Why not steal radios to communicate better?
-
No question about it, guns are tough to buy in England, but Jesus, in this case they could just go to a local police station and take them. Yeah, I know London cops aren’t armed to the teeth like American cops, but they gotta have something.
And finally, a question:
If the characters could learn to realistically imitate the zombies, would they be left alone?
Because it wasn’t in the budget, nor necessary for the plot. Remember, there was also an evacuation…that would leave the place rather devoid, wouldn’t it?
Because they didn’t think of it. When they made the decision to leave, they left…they didn’t stop and make plans for the next several days before heading out, they didn’t gather up a list of supplies, they didn’t really do much of anything but say “Hey, we’re running out of food and water, and if we stay here, we’re going to die, so let’s go.” It was a quick decision, they took what they had, and they left. I don’t remember them running over any zombies, so I don’t think that was a criteria for their escape…they just wanted a car that could hold them all, and Frank happened to have one. I know if I needed to get the hell out of my town, I’d load up my car and go…not search around the city wasting time looking for one that was “just right.”
Again, it’s not really necessary for the plot, and it’s not really necessary overall. Sure, it makes sense, but again, in their situation, they had a taxi, they needed a car, they got one.
Because they were all hanging out together. What need did they have for radios? It’s not like there was anyone to communicate with.
Maybe all the police stations were already raided. Frank was a riot cop, and he didn’t seem to have any firearms. He had access to them because of his position, but apparently couldn’t gain access to them. Don’t know why, don’t really need to. If you look at the events that happened in the movie, it wouldn’t have made a damn difference.
I doubt it, but it’s possible. There’s a deleted scene where a bunch of infected are storming the mansion and Jim manages to slink by rather unnoticed. Of course, they were tearing poor Jones apart, so they were a bit preoccupied. Also, due to the fact that the infected can recognize other infected by some means, it’s quite possible that whatever gives them that intuition would be able to clue them in to the faker.
I just watched it again recently, and for all those complaining about the lack of bodies, there is actually a scene that shows a bunch of dead corpses, but it’s rather hard to make out. While driving out of London in the taxi, there’s a shot where, in the foreground, you can see one corpse ont he ground and another hanging out of a bulldozer’s cup. The next shot shows Jim looking out the window, and in the reflextion, you can see a ton of bodies wrapped up and piled up with at least one bulldozer nearby. Little bit of proof that the infection didn’t just swarm threw the city in one big feld swoop, but happened in waves, and after each wave, the city cleaned the bodies and moved them to a centralized area. The commentary discusses that the church Jim enters into is one such place. So, there’s an explaination for you. The commentary also mentions that sure, even with cleanup efforts, there would probably be more bodies in the street, but they opted to go the way they did for abiance and impact, and personally, I still think they made the best choice.
But that’s just me.
I know the people that didn’t like this movie won’t but I highly recommend listening to the commentary track. It explains where the they were coming from, and why they did things the way they did. It’s the most interesting commentsry track I’ve heard so far.
About the diner (or cafe) scene, the postioning of the bodies was based on photographs of genocide in Bosnia. The church, and the pile of bodies the soldiers take Jim to to be shot were also based on them too.
The Valium was only taken by Jim, and the half of one taken by the daughter, so it’s not like they were all incapacitated. Also, it was implied that Frank stayed awake to stand watch.
When Frank gets giddy and reckless in the tunnel, it makes perfect sense to me. He’s been trapped in a flat for weeks, with little hope of making it out alive. His food and water supplies are dwindling. It’s no surprise that when he gets out of that situation he responds the way he does, daughter in car or not.